You won't be offended, Watson? You will realize that among your many talents dissimulation finds no place, and that if you had shared my secret you would never have been able to impress Smith with the urgent necessity of his presence, which was the vital point of the whole scheme.

In Fruits Basket, the fact that Akito is a woman is kept a secret not just from Tohru, but from all the cursed Sohma save for the ones already present at the time she was born (Shigure, Ayame, Kureno and Hatori). When Kureno tells this to Tohru, she has an Heroic BSOD.

Sailor Moon. In the Sailor Stars anime, Kakyuu was actually hiding in a small teapot that Usagi's "adoptive sister" Chibi-Chibi had all the time with her. After she finally appears to save Usagi's life, she apologizes to the Sailor Starlights and tells them that she was healing her injuries inside the teapot and wasn't able to just appear in front of them until it was time.

In one Black Canary miniseries, when Black Canary's adopted daughter Sin is kidnapped, Green Arrow makes it appear that the rescue attempt, badly bungled, killed Sin. He knows the kidnappers will watch Black Canary and note if she does not show grief, so he keeps her in the dark to make sure her reaction will be authentic, and he does not expect her to forgive him when he reveals the truth.

The Flash. In one issue of Impulse, Max and The Trickster pull off a plot like this to take down a pair of mob bosses.

Iron Man. The reason Tony Stark didn't tell Jim Rhodes about faking his death so he could undergo experimental reconstructive surgery was exactly because Stark wanted Rhodey's reactions to his "death" to be genuine, so Stark's opponents wouldn't come looking for him. Once Stark came back, Rhodey was pissed, and the incident left their friendship broken for a long time.

In the movie Chicago, Billy Flynn doesn't tell Roxie that he made it seem like the prosecutor had tampered with her diary in order to keep her from screwing up his plan during her trial.

In The Dark Knight, Gordon fakes his death, ostensibly for his family's safety, but the reveal happens so quickly and in the middle of the film's biggest escalation scene that you might miss his reasoning on the first viewing. Or the seventeenth.

Independence Day. The Secretary of Defense decided not to tell the President of the U.S. about Area 51 (where the alien spaceship was being studied) because of "plausible deniability". It was established in his dealings with his family that the President was a bad liar, and if he had known about Area 51 he wouldn't have been able to effectively lie if questioned about it (e.g. by a reporter).

After faking the symptoms of an exotic disease, Holmes provides the page quote while speaking to Watson. As Holmes further explains, while he didn't have a great deal of confidence in Watson's ability to deceive, he did have a great deal of confidence in Watson's abilities as a doctor, which is why he was so insistent that Watson not touch him—a cursory examination by Watson would have revealed the ruse immediately.

In Bert Coules's radio adaptation, Watson fails to accept Holmes's No Hard Feelings at the end, instead calling him out not only for the deception, but for asking Watson to hide in the room as a witness, and then forgetting about him.

"The Adventure of the Empty House". An even more extreme example occurs after his final brush with Moriarty, after which he pretended to be dead for three years. Revealing the truth that time nearly gave Watson heart failure.

Hercule Poirot pulled this one all the time (except that he rarely gives a reason).

Occurs in The Light Bearer (a historical fiction novel about ancient Rome). The male protagonist allows his aunt Arria to think her children have died in a fire in order to save them from abduction by Nero. Since Nero was in the room when the announcement was made, the protagonist knew he would not have been fooled if Arria had not expressed real shock and grief.

The entire plot of Mordant's Need (the first novel of which is The Mirror of Her Dreams) by Stephen R. Donaldson revolved around a king pretending to be insane to drive away his allies. He needed to appear weak.

Lucky Starr pulls this all the time, often dramatically accusing the wrong suspect on purpose and using people's reactions to gain proof against the real culprit. The worst instance is in Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, in which Lucky allows everyone to believe he is going to betray Earth—including his best friend, who thinks Lucky is turning traitor in exchange for the friend's life.

In the last few pages of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, it turns out that Katniss' friends kept her in the dark about some pretty huge things, including the fact that District 13 really exists, because Katniss' poor deception skills and Chronic Hero Syndrome would have ruined their plans if she had known. Also, in case the Capitol captured Katniss or Peeta ( and they did capture the latter), they wouldn't know anything about the plans.

In an episode of Babylon 5, Londo leads Vir to believe he is planning to kill G'Kar, when in actual fact it was part of a greater scheme to make rival Lord Refa (who has a telepath on his payroll) think that was the plan and go after G'Kar first, so that G'Kar could kill Refa for Londo. Vir, of course, isn't happy about being used in this manner, and is further angered when Londo states that Refa would believe him too unimportant to kill (as it implies that Londo also thinks that, even if the truth is quite different).

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Enemies" uses this as well; Angel fakes turning evil to trick Faith, and really punches Xander (who was clueless) in the face during the masquerade. Whether the pleasure he took in doing so was real is left ambiguous.

Cheers did this a lot, such as the episode in which Coach and Harry the Hat conspired to recover Coach's money from a con by Harry pretending to betray the coach. Diane whined that they would have helped, but Harry replied, "Coach and I didn't think you weren't smart enough to pull it off."

The first episode of Hustle with Danny (and the audience) only let in at the end.

Happens a great deal in Hustle actually, due to a combination of the Unspoken Plan Guarantee, in-character Enforced Method Acting (as in the first episode, where the realism of Danny's reactions to the unfolding situation were vital. It was also a trick to test his loyalty, as in the next point) and, in some cases, the characters tricking each other (as in the Season 3 episode where Mickey and Danny get dumped naked in Trafalgar Square for a contest to determine the leadership of the crew).

"Shades of Grey": Everyone is kept in the dark by Hammond, O'Neill and a couple of alien races.

"Dominion": Vala is kept in the dark about her own plan (thanks to a memory-altering device) to fool her mind-reading Big Bad daughter Adria.

Star Trek: Voyager did this with Tom Paris - during the second season he became a much more shady and Jerkass character (gambling, mouthing off at Chakotay, showing up late for duty, etc.) until he finally asked to be put off the ship. It turned out that it was a ruse cooked up by Janeway and Tuvok to try and find the crewman feeding information to Seska, and Chakotay was kept in the dark in case the spy was one of his former crewmen. Needless to say, Chakotay was very unhappy when he found out he'd been played yet again.note This was the second time these two people had tricked him — Tuvok had originally been a spy in Chakotay's Maquis crew. In fact, we learn in "Fury" that they were keeping ANOTHER major secret from him at this point.

The radio drama of Return of the Jedi contains one of these, though it wasn't explained in the film. C-3PO was deliberately kept in the dark about Luke's complicated plan to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt, so that when Jabba had Threepio's data files scanned and found no trace of the stratagem, he accepted the droid's story at face-value. (R2-D2, meanwhile, was in on the whole thing.) Leia later apologizes to Threepio for the deception.

In Star WarsKnights of the Old Republic, Bastila would have been ready to tell the player character that s/he is Revan but the Jedi Council forbid her, for they feared that evil would be let loose on the universe again. Depending on the player character's reaction, this may bring on the very nightmare their actions were intended to prevent.

The Men In Black cartoon. J is kept out of the loop on Zed's phony retirement, so that the alien frankenstein Alpha will read J's mind and believe the lie. Unfortunately for the MIB, J had his doubts, and Alpha saw through the deception.

An episode of Transformers: Beast Wars had Rattrap switch sides, which was set up by Optimus and himself so they could find out how the Predacons were tapping their transmissions.

Similar but different application in an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Rainbow Dash discovers that her friends have a weekly "pet playdate" and asks why she's never found out about this. They thought about telling her, but she A) doesn't have a pet and B) tends to be napping around the time they have the playdate, so they figured she wouldn't really care one way or the other if they told her. She concedes the logic, then decides to get offended at the implication that she'll never have a pet with whom to participate.

In the '90s Iron Man cartoon, Tony does this twice. The first time, a fake marriage to Julia, is played for laughs. (Apparently it was important that Wanda's jealousy be realistic.) The second time, in which Tony fakes his death, does NOT amuse the team — they kick him out and relocate. The second season also treats the fake-marriage stunt a bit more seriously.

In the Punky Brewster episode "Growing Pain," Glomer starts to grow uncontrollably after he sneezes from eating pepperoni pizza. The flowers from Margaux's parade float help Glomer to shrink a little, but as he tries to tell Punky this, she's not listening because she's competing against Margaux with her own float.

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